The Scar in the Scalawag
by PrincessAlica
Summary: When two ladies discover a body in a tree in Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Bones and booth must travel to Atlanta to unravel a 150 year old murder!


Author's Note: In honor of April being cross-over month here I am posting a Bones/GWTW cross. And a special thank you to APkrfan who already has written a GWTW/Bones cross which is what got me to watching Bones in the first place. So thank you for writing that cross! This also has shout outs to some of my amazing friends in the GWTW community. So here it is my first really serious cross, because no the GH one doesn't count. So there Capt. I got this up first!

The November weather was gorgeous, the trees just beginning to change color in preparation for the colder weather to come. Tall building that had once been factories jutting above the tree line, busy roads with noisy cars and the strip club across from the park were only minor distractions, for once inside Oakland, it was impossible not to be swallowed up by the past.

"Come on! Hurry up! We don't have much more time!" A young woman squealed as she and her friend chased each other down the uneven stone path. "And anyway I want to get there because Melissa or Bluesneak or Kendra might be there, and I really want to meet them. We have been talking for nearly two years and you are the first one for me to meet. It's too bad that Corn and Dani couldn't make it. It's crazy that we still haven't met face to face."

"Al, hey I can't keep up with you!" The other girl panted as they rushed.

"We only have a little time before we have to get back on the road to Marietta to make it to the big event and the costume ball. And I know that Margaret Mitchell's grave is around here somewhere. Corrin gave me directions." She responded, "Listen it's probably just over there. She said that there were signs and everything."

"I know that we need to hurry, but I just got in from England. I'm a bit jet lagged." The dark haired girl responded. "Wow, that must have been some storm that came through last night." She added as she surveyed the damage.

The ground was littered with broken branches and leaves, "Yeah, Janet. I don't think that they have checked out the state of the cemetery this morning. Look at that tree. It has been completely uprooted. Oh, my God! Is that what I think it is? Oh God!" She screamed.

Janet turned and started, "Is that a skeleton?" And indeed within the twisted uprooted roots of the massive fallen tree was a splintered old fashioned casket which did little to conceal the skeleton inside.

"I don't understand why we are here, Booth. It is a cemetery; surely someone here in the South could address this matter." Temperance Brennan said as they followed the twisting rocky path through Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia.

"Apparently they are working on getting ready for the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. Look over there… see that thing pointing up past the giant mausoleum's…. that's the confederate soldiers memorial." He gestured in the direction opposite from where they had come. "I hear that Margaret Mitchell is supposedly buried around here. There should be signs somewhere."

She looked at him blankly.

"You know Bones, the lady who wrote Gone With the Wind. Surely you have heard of that." He said as he adjusted his tie.

"Oh, yes I believe that I have." She added with a slight furrow of her brow, "but I don't understand the significance of why I would be interested in seeing her grave, unless I am needed to authenticate her remains."

"Well apparently, Ms. Mitchell may have been using real people more than anyone realized. We are here to look at the remains of a certain Frank Kennedy." At the continued expressionless look on his partner's face he added. "Scarlett O'Hara's second husband. I think he was killed in a klan raid. We are looking for proof that it is indeed Mr. Kennedy."

"What method of authentication can we use? Do we have a DNA sample that we can compare against? And I still don't understand why it was necessary for us to come from D.C. to investigate." She said as they neared the gravesite. "What disturbed the grave?"

"There was a major storm a week ago, and it ripped a tree up that was planted beside the grave, disturbing the remains. This is a historic site, but apparently they don't have enough funds to keep with the repairs. And Frank Kennedy's great-great granddaughter still looks after the site and so we have a DNA sample from her. It apparently is a big news item, especially since it was found on the same weekend as the repremiere in Marietta. Apparently there were hundreds of fans flocking the city" He explained.

But a few steps farther and words were no longer necessary. One of the great oak trees that had helped give the place its name. Entwined with the upturned roots was what undoubtedly was a rotting coffin. "They waited a week to do something about this? This is negligence."

"So do you want me to bag it and have it sent to the Jeffersonian?"

"That seems to be the logical answer, so yes. Have them collect samples and send it to the Jeffersonian." She responded calmly.

"Here are the two ladies that found the body. I asked them to meet us here." Booth explained at the two ladies who looked to be in their late twenties that were standing staring at the upturned tree as Dr. Brennan veered towards the dangling skeleton. "Alica and Janet?" Can you tell me how it was that you came upon the remains?"

"We just wanted to see Margaret Mitchell's grave. Corrin said it was something that we should see while we were here. We were on our way to Marietta, and we decided to take a detour" Alica flashed her copy of the book that she carried in her bag. "So we were late to the Virginia Reel!" She paused for a moment before proceeding, "The headstone says that it was Frank Kennedy, but it couldn't be THE Frank Kennedy, I mean right? Because he was only a character in the book. I know we like to play like they were real people, but this is just a little too bizarre."

"Of Course, it isn't really Frank Kennedy. It's just a coincidence. Right?"

Alica shook her heard furiously, "But the death and birth dates are right. They are almost to the day that I estimated. It has to be him. And look you can see the hole in the skull even from here, and you know that he was shot in head after Scarlett got attacked going through Shanty town."

"Whatever," she told her friend, turning the full force of her attention on Agent Booth. "Do you need our phone numbers? For like follow up questions or something?" Janet inserted eagerly. "You can call me if you need anything really." Janet blushed like a schoolgirl and jabbed her companion in the ribs."

Alica immediately retaliated and elbowed her in the side. "Seriously? Janet! Quit hitting on him." She turned and eyed Booth carefully. "You know, dressed in period costume, he could totally pass for Rhett Butler. Wouldn't everyone at Scarlett on the Square just eat him up. I did hope to get my picture taken with a Rhett look-alike this weekend, and because of all of this it didn't happen." She dug in her bag and pulled out one of her many cameras, handing it to an indignant Janet. "Here just take a quick picture, I'll take yours next."

Her friend ignored her and turned her attention to the FBI agent in front of her, while Alica angled herself and the camera strategically to catch both herself and the man in the picture. "It's a male right," Janet contributed motioning to the body that was being extricated from the tree, under Dr. Brennan's giudance. " I can tell from the pelvis, I took biology in high school." Then she added in a low voice, "I know all about the human body, if you know what I mean."

"Janet! That's terrible! That's something Corrin would say on the podcast just to get a squeal out of me." Alica blushed.

With a quick snap of the camera, Booth made a hasty exit. "I'll call you if I need anything else."

"You know that we know the book backward and forward if it really is Frank Kennedy, the old maid in britches. I even made a website. We can tell you just about anything." Alica inserted.

"Just coming Bones," he called out in response to nothing, and made a hasty exit.

They watched his retreat in silence until Alica blurted out, "You were too aggressive, you've scared him away!"

"No I wasn't! It was you and your stupid camera!" Janet retorted.

They bickered back and forth as they walked the path towards the grave of Margaret Mitchell. "Well he was hot. Did you see the picture?" Alica offered as she fiddled with the camera to display the image of her and Booth on the back of the object. "Ah, yes. He could totally be a modern day Rhett."

Back in the quiet normalcy of the Jeffersonian, Temperance Brennan stood carefully examining the remains before her as one of the interns stood watching her cautiously.

"Mr. Vincent Nigel Murray, I would like for you to clean the bones, while Hodgins takes samples from the clothing and bones for particulates." She directed.

"Is this really supposed to be Frank Kennedy?" Angela Montenegro asked as she stepped closer to the autopsy table. "Wait, I didn't think that he was real. And if he is, does that mean Rhett Butler was real, because I would like to meet him"

"Did you know that Cammie King, the child actress who played Bonnie Blue Butler, could not top blinking during the filming of her funeral scene, when she is obviously supposed to be dead. A mask of her face was made, and the scene was finally filmed with the actress wearing the mask?" The intern inserted as he began carefully cleaning the dirt from the bones.

A sigh escaped from Dr. Brennan. "Just check for particulates to confirm that the body had been interred at Oakland for the duration of time since his death in what is recorded as 1867, and then confirm the cause of death."

"Did you know that during the occupation of Atlanta during the Fall of 1864 that they dug up the graves in Oakland Cemetary and stole the valuables and left the bodies lying there with the broken coffins?" He added.

Turning to her friend, "and even if Rhett Butler did exist then he would undoubtedly be a century in the grave."

"I'm just saying, a man like that…" she added with a dreamy look in her eyes.

"I've been told that I look like a modern day Rhett Butler." Booth quickly added, stepping up the table.

"You do have the right coloring and body shape, those broad shoulders and that narrow waist." She eyed him appraisingly.

"I'm going to dust for particulates, but do we have anything to compare to with what history says happened to this man?" Jack Hodgins asked as he walked onto the platform.

"Oh, hmmm… what?" She asked shaken from her daze.

"What is the historical facts about this man's death?"

"According to the book, he was killed in a klan raid by a shot through the forehead by a yankee." Angela shrugged off the surprised looks at her knowledge of the book. "What? I love that story. It is so tragic. So what if I occasionally even indulge in a little fanfiction, oh like none of you have ever done that."

"Actually no, I generally stick to reading scientific journals, Ang."

"I'll watch the movie with you, but I'm sorry I haven't gotten around to reading a 1,000 page plus book written over 70 years ago." Jack offered. "And besides I am going to take my particulate evidence and begin examining it." He said, taking his collection and leaving the platform.

Vincent looked up from the skull he was working on, "did you know that Adjusted for inflation, GWTW is the world's highest grossing movie." He bent over again to check something, "Dr. Brennan there is an anomaly on this skull. Angela, did the book say anything about a second shot?"

"It appears that he was killed by the gunshot to the glabella at close range, but that does not agree with the account in the book, although the author might have been mistaken. Also there is slight beveling around the inside of the hole, which confirms my analysis" Dr. Brennan explained.

"No, I don't think so. What if instead she had been told wrong about what happened. No one would have been able to prove one way or another back then how he had been killed. Just a minute…." Angela said as she pulled up a screen on her phone. "So I downloaded a copy of Gone With the Wind, and let me just pull up a few lines. It's something I always wondered about…" She continued playing with the screen, " ok here it is," she paused to explain, "there was speculation that Scarlett's third husband was in fact the one who killed her second husband."

"Well, I don't know about the book, but these injuries were not caused by the same type of gun. This one that was merely a glancing blow looks like it was made by the right type of bullet that would have come from the type of guns used by the occupying Northern soldiers, but this blow to the frontal bone looks to have come from a different caliber gun. Ang, can you check out the patterns and see if you can determine a type of gun and caliber?"

"Oh, here it is—the line that I was looking for, 'I cared so much I believe I would have

killed Frank Kennedy if he hadn't died when he did'." She looked up from the screen. "That sounds an awful lot like a confession doesn't it? And yeah, I'll get right on it. I just need to enter the dimensions into the computer and see if I can come up with a likely sequence of events." She grinned, "and then let me guess we will get done and some sexy man will walk in here and say 'Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.' "

Did you know that "Contrary to popular belief, Gone with the Wind not the first film to use the word "damn"?"

"Where is Cam?" Brennan asked, ignoring the ramblings of Vincent.

"I'm right here. There is apparently a media circus surrounding this. People are in an uproar to think that Gone With the Wind was more fact than fiction. It would be nice if we could get this matter resolved as quickly as possible. It is consuming all of my time."

"Cam, it might not be so easy to brush this under the rug. Bones, thinks that someone killed this man." Booth responded.

"Well, yes I am well aware. He was shot by the occupying army." Cam responded. "Of course that is only based on the book, but the fact that his name and death dates appear in the book tells me that it may be more accurate than anyone ever gave it credit for."

"No, that is doubtful. It looks like he was shot with another weapon after being shot by a US military issue gun of the time period. Ang, you've run the numbers into the computer, do you agree?"

"These definitely weren't made by the same weapon. Hodgins can check the residue, but I know that it will only confirm what the size and shape of the holes tells me. The closet match for the reverse engineering for the bullet that matches the bullet that went through the temporal bone is a 1860's era dueling pistol that was sold in very limited quantities, they usually came with mother of pearl inlaid handles." She slapped her hand over her mouth, "oh God! I think that I know what happened. Rhett had dueling pistols. Brennan, I think that Rhett Butler really did kill Frank Kennedy." She began furiously tapping on the device she held in her hand. "I think that according to the description, Rhett Butler had the same pistols that he was wearing when they were fleeing Atlanta before it burned."

"Did you know that the scene that is called the burning of Atlanta, does not in fact show the burning of Atlanta, but instead the attempts by the Confederate army to destroy their ammunitions to prevent the Yanks from getting it. The burning of Atlanta took place several months later when Sherman left the town." The intern said as he continued to carefully brush the dirt away from the skull.

"A ha!" Hodgins yelped, and he swiped his card and bounded up the stairs. "I've found the bullet. This is not a government issue bullet. This is clearly a conspiracy. He was shot with a pistol."

The evidence continued to mount, and was confirmed when Kennedy's descendant came forward with both the gun that had not been used since the incident. The little old lady that had held on to these family heirlooms was saddened to hear the truth.

"So what happened to them, Rhett and Scarlett?" Angela asked, with an eager expression on her face.

"After he left he kept his word and visited occasionally to keep down the gossip. But it was never the same, and he died in 1890. Great grand Scarlett lived several years longer, but she had abused her body too much during the war. Ill health plagued her until she died in 1917. I'm sorry to say that there was no happy ending." The gentle lady with brilliant green eyes replied. "Grandmother Ella was a saint though. Everyone loved her."

"Thank you." Angela replied, saddened but satisfied with the truth of the end.

"So, they say that this is one of the greatest movies of all time?" She asked.

"Yes, Bones. Depending on who you ask, but always it makes the top ten. Do you want some popcorn?" He said as he sat down on his couch and settled in beside her.

"You know slavery was really an antiquated ritual by the time that this movie was made. I don't understand the appeal." She responded.

"Just watch the movie. You might like it." Booth replied, leaning near to her.

"Perhaps. It is not every day that there is a movie about one of our cases. I imagine that it would be a good thing for me to watch, since it is so well known."

"Just watch, Bones, just watch."

And the screen came alive as Scarlett O'Hara began, "War, war, war…."

The End.

Author's End note: I just have to have Vincent Nigel Murray in this. I mean it was the chance to spout random trivia, and who better to do it.


End file.
